


First Times

by buffylovesfaith



Category: Orange is the New Black
Genre: Child Neglect, Drug Addiction, F/F, First Kiss, First Love, First Meetings, First Time, Fluff and Angst, Heroin
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2019-01-05 21:01:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12197340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buffylovesfaith/pseuds/buffylovesfaith
Summary: First times in Nicky's life, first times in Lorna's life, and first times in their life together.





	First Times

Nicky first realized her mother probably didn’t love her when she was six, and her mom didn’t show up to her school play. Not because she was working, not because she forgot, not because she was stuck in traffic, but because she would rather get her toenails painted than watch Nicky crawl around on a wooden stage pretending to be a lion for two hours. 

(The reason Nicky was cast as the lion instead of the panther like she had wanted to be, and why Michelle and Debra laughed at her when the teacher said she had a “perfect mane” and patted her on the head was lost on her at the time, but she realized once she grew up and thought back on it—her hair. Her hair which had always marked her as weird and difficult, and as different from her mother as she could be.)

When her nanny dropped her at home after the play, all her mother said was that she hoped Nicky hadn’t gotten stains on the knees of her white tights, and then she popped the cork on her champagne bottle and glided up the stairs to take a bath in her suite, which consisted of the entire top level of their giant apartment, leaving Nicky standing alone in the cold and sterile kitchen. 

The first time Nicky had a crush on a girl she was ten and didn’t realize what it was, but her stomach swooped and her heart clenched whenever she was around Gina Ricci, and she wanted to pull on her short dark curls and tackle her on the recess field and help her with her spelling, and she loved her soft sweaters and hearing her read aloud to the class. Her nanny found a letter Nicky had written to Gina, and sat Nicky down and told her to hide the letter. Nicky didn’t understand, but did it because she loved her nanny, and when a week later she overheard Gina telling Kristine that she was “dirty and loud” after she’d been wrestling with Sam in a pile of leaves during lunch, she ran home and cried into her nanny’s chest. 

Nicky first kissed a girl when she was fifteen. They were English partners, and Nicky had invited the girl to her house to study. They were sitting on the white leather couch in the first living room, their open notebooks and textbooks sprawled all over the wooden coffee table, and Nicky looked over at the front door, where her muddy, black Doc Martens lay kicked over in a heap, right next to Janet’s clean, white-and-pink-striped sneakers and she was struck by the perfection of that image, the symmetry, and she slowly leaned over her gray hoodie that lay curled up between them on the couch, and pressed her lips against the other girl’s. She could feel Janet’s startled intake of breath, and after waiting a moment with her lips softly held against the brunette’s, Nicky was about to pull away when she felt the other girl start to kiss her back. They kissed, soft and slow, for several minutes and Nicky felt like her heart would break out of her chest and take flight around her mother’s impersonal living space (for it really was all her mother’s, not her own), smearing the blood that flowed from dripping, ripped valves on the shiny white walls and messing up their appearance, _finally_ —when she heard a sharp “ _mm hmm_ ” break through the sound of their kissing. She recognized the sound of her mother’s angry throat clearing immediately and she pulled away and looked up to see her mother standing on the staircase landing, frowning intensely and arms crossed in disapproval. 

After her mother had icily told Nicky that it was time for her friend to go home, and Janet had scurried out the front door in fear, her mother sat down stiffly on the edge of the couch and told Nicky they needed to have a “conversation”.

“You know I won’t tell you what to do—I’ve never been that kind of mother.” She said it like she was looking for praise, like she wanted some kind of thanks for being a _cool mom_ and leaving Nicky alone, virtually unbothered, since Nicky was a baby, but Nicky just scoffed and looked away because she _knew_ , boy did she know. Knew that her mom wouldn’t tell her what to do if Nicky had scrapped her elbow and didn’t know how to clean it, wouldn’t tell her what to do if Nicky was trying to make a cake for her class’s potluck and didn’t know how, wouldn’t tell her what to do if Nicky was up all night, sick and throwing up and didn’t know how to take care of herself. 

“But you have to consider what people will _think_. Whatever actions you take now will affect the rest of your life. What people think of you matters. The world is run by it’s society, remember that.”

That was the first and last time Nicky and Marka discussed Nicky’s sexuality, or Nicky’s life at all, really. But at fifteen, after a conversation she could barely remember years later, one which was so similar to other conversations they’d had that they all blended and ran together in her mind, Nicky subconciously decided that Marka was right. The world was run by society, by people like her mother. A world which Nicky had never fit into, a world which had always made her feel worthless and inferior. She decided she _would_ consider what they would think. And she would do whatever they would hate the most. She would just do what came most natural to her, and run with it as far as she could, and have fucking fun as she did.

The first time she smoked—both cigarettes and pot—she was also fifteen. She smoked them behind the bleachers of her high school, with the burnouts who quickly became her group of friends. She rapidly tried speed, coke, ecstasy—lots of thrilling first experiences were racked up and kicked off her bucket list as she experimented and hunted for ways to have the most fun, and lose herself the quickest.

Nicky fucked a girl for the first time when she was sixteen. Earlier than some people, but later than most people had assumed she had. They were drunk, and high, and fooling around on the terrace of Nicky’s room. It wasn’t the perfect first time that she had envisioned when she was thirteen, but Nicky had kind of given up on perfect anything by now. It was good at least, if kind of awkward and impersonal, and the girl let Nicky take control. They fucked hard and long—Nicky wanted to try everything once—and only fell asleep when the sun was rising. When Nicky woke up the girl was gone. Nicky didn’t remember her name. 

Over the next few years Nicky fucked lots of girls. Half the time she didn’t remember what had happened the night before. She never had feelings for any of them. Gone where the days of Gina’s and Janet’s, of getting her feelings involved. Now she only wanted one thing: to taste oblivion. If she had a bag of drugs and a body to satisfy her lust then she was fine. If not, then she would get it. It was that simple. 

She tried heroin for the first time right before her eighteenth birthday. She quickly realized that smack was what had been missing from her life all along. It was what could make her feel good, worthy, happy. Heroin would whisper to her that she wasn’t a piece of shit, that there was a point to her life. It would tell her that she didn’t need anyone’s love. When before she would sit huddled in a corner of her room, wondering what was wrong with her, why her mother didn’t love her, why she had no real friends, no girlfriend, _now_ , now she knew that she was just meant for different things then they were. As she flunked out of school, it would tell her so what if her life was falling apart, technically? This is how rock stars, artists, people in touch with true _living_ spent their days. She was above it all. As she gazed at the world through hollow, dead eyes and saw nothing but disgust and anger from other people in return, heroin told her not to care, not to accept their judgment of her. They didn’t know her. No one did. 

She spent her eighteenth birthday hovering somewhere between her bed and her bedroom ceiling, or maybe that’s just how it felt because she was high as a kite. She watched light dance between her fingers. She closed her eyes and laughed softly. She could see her future stretched out before her. This was it. 

Right after Nicky’s eighteenth birthday Marka bought her her own flat and hired a team to move her out, happy to be rid of her. She didn’t care that Nicky hadn’t graduated (of course), just told Nicky that she was sure she knew what she was doing, and left. The next years of Nicky’s life were all the same: vague, joyless and blurry. Get high, come down, get high, come down. Fuck some bitch. Whatever. Nothing really mattered anyway, right? She was getting older, and sicker she could tell, but she didn’t care. 

The first time she overdosed and the first time she had to have a surgery were milestones, but they didn’t snap her out of her haze. She wouldn’t accept that she had run with it as far as she could, wouldn’t accept that she was about to run into a wall and crash even if it was obvious. 

The first time she got arrested didn’t work either. But the second time, well. That would prove to be the one that changed everything.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't really know if I like this, so I would love to hear your guys' thoughts on it! :)


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